Brady says he is still mulling over his NFL future

LOS ANGELES – Tom Brady says he will “know when the time is right” but for now he taking his future “day-by-day” and hasn’t made up his mind about retiring from the National Football League.

Brady said plans for a quiet weekend at home with the family watching the NFL playoffs was shattered when reports came out Saturday that he would retire after 22 seasons and seven Super Bowl rings.

“I was trying to enjoy a nice weekend,” Brady told a US-based SiriusXM podcast ‘Let’s Go!’ “It didn’t quite turn out that way because my phone got really busy, but that’s just part of being in the situation I’m in.”

American sports broadcaster ESPN cited unidentified sources saying that Brady would retire. The report did not say when Brady planned to make an announcement.

Brady reiterated on Monday that he is still mulling over his future.

“Sometimes it takes some time to really evaluate how you feel and what you want to do,” he said. “I think when the time’s right I’ll be ready to make a decision one way or another, just like I said last week.

“I think for me, it’s literally day to day. I’m just trying to do the best I can every day, evaluate things as they come, and I’m trying to make a great decision for me and my family.”

Asked about the timing of a decision, Brady said: “I don’t know. I’ll know when the time is right. Like I’ve always said, I’m very blessed to play as long as I have. As things have gone on in the later parts of my career … there’s a lot of interest in when I’m going to stop playing. I understand that. When I know, I’ll know. When I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m not going to race to some conclusion about that.”

Brady said he wasn’t pleased that his retirement speculation ended up being a distraction from the playoff games on the weekend.

“There were some very important games on the weekend,” Brady said. “The focus should be on those great games.”